Senior Backend Engineer, Money Movement & Payments

Gusto; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 197,000 - 247,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity (RSUs)

Job summary

Gusto is seeking an experienced software engineer to own backend services and APIs for our retirement money movement systems. You will ship production code, handle real financial edge cases, and collaborate with product, compliance, and operations to deliver reliable, scalable solutions.

The role emphasizes end-to-end ownership, strong API design, and mentoring other engineers in a fast-paced, security‑minded environment that serves 500,000+ small businesses nationwide.

Qualifications

• Eight+ years of software engineering experience
• Experience with payments or financial systems
• Strong API and backend service design
• Comfort owning end-to-end system delivery and production support
• Proven collaboration with PMs and cross-functional partners
• Clear, collaborative communicator with mentoring skills

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and ship services and APIs for money movement and financial integrations
• Own backend services and production code for payroll-related systems
• Work on payments, settlements, reconciliation, and corrections involving real customer funds
• Develop workflows such as payroll integration, KYB/KYC, 401k loans, billing, and IRA
• Partner with product, compliance, and operations to scope work and deliver production-ready solutions
• Debug production issues and improve reliability, observability, and tooling
• Mentor other engineers to tackle complex problems at scale
• Write clear, well-tested code that ships quickly and scales

Skills

Software engineering

Payments

APIs

Ruby on Rails

Mentoring

Tools

PostgreSQL

Job description

Gusto is seeking an experienced software engineer to own backend services and APIs for our retirement money movement systems. You will ship production code, handle real financial edge cases, and collaborate with product, compliance, and operations to deliver reliable, scalable solutions.

The role emphasizes end-to-end ownership, strong API design, and mentoring other engineers in a fast-paced, security‑minded environment that serves 500,000+ small businesses nationwide.